News & Publications

User-friendly software that can advance vaccine supply chain decision making is now available

April 23, 2018

Public health experts at the Global Obesity Prevention Center (GOPC) at Johns Hopkins University and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) have released their HERMES (Highly Extensible Resource for Modeling Event-Driven Supply Chains) supply-chain modeling software for public use. The user-friendly HERMES software will enable decision makers and other stakeholders to analyze supply chains of vaccines and other medical supplies to make them more efficient and reliable.

Paola Buitrago has been appointed as the founding director of the Artificial Intelligence & Big Data (AI&BD) Group at PSC. The group expands the scope of the center’s activities to enable research through the convergence of AI and high-performance computing (HPC). Buitrago’s vision amplifies PSC’s emphasis on data-driven discovery and strengthens PSC’s connections across CMU and the private sector.

PSC has a strong history enabling artificial intelligence (AI) research at scale. AI advancements at PSC include Never Ending Language Learning (NELL), led by CMU’s Tom Mitchell and William Cohen, on PSC’s Blacklight system and the 2017 history-making victory of Libratus, led by CMU’s Tuomas Sandholm, over the world’s top human poker pros on PSC’s Bridges system. Recognizing the vast strategic importance of AI to science and society, PSC has created a new Artificial Intelligence & Big Data (AI&BD) Group, directed by Paola Buitrago.

Phil Blood, widely recognized for his contributions to national genomics and molecular dynamics communities, has been appointed senior director of PSC’s Computational Biology Group. In his new position, Blood is responsible for PSC’s strategy across the life sciences, overseeing the Biomedical Applications and Public Health Applications Groups and also working more broadly to expand PSC’s contributions to this vital research segment.

To unify its research efforts and strategic planning in computational biology and public health, PSC has launched a new Computational Biology Group. The senior director of the new group, Phil Blood, will oversee PSC’s Biomedical Applications and Public Health Applications Groups.

Jason Sommerfield has been appointed director of PSC’s Facilities Technology Group, succeeding J. Ray Scott. In his new position, Sommerfield will be responsible for leading the deployment and operation of high-impact resources for computation and data analytics serving national communities.

Michael Levine and Ralph Roskies Day Proclaimed in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County

Parallel State Proclamations Also Recognize PSC Founders' Legacy of Service and Discovery

Feb. 16, 2018

By proclamation of the mayor and the county executive, today is Michael Levine and Ralph Roskies Day in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. Mayor Peduto and County Executive Fitzgerald recognized the now-retired scientific directors of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) for their service to the city’s and county’s technical base and scientific progress over 30 years.

On Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, respectively, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Senate and House of Representatives voted on proclamations similarly recognizing the pair.

CMU Group Describes "Superhuman" Poker AI in Science

Libratus Used PSC's Bridges to Formulate Its Strategy in Contest with Best Human Players

Dec. 18, 2017

In a paper published online yesterday by the journal Science, Tuomas Sandholm, CMU professor of computer science, and Noam Brown, a PhD student in the Computer Science Department, detail how their AI achieved superhuman performance at Heads-Up, No-Limit Texas Hold'em poker. "Libratus" beat four of the world's best human players by breaking the game into computationally manageable parts and, based on its opponents' game play, fixing potential weaknesses in its strategy during the competition. Libratus used PSC's Bridges system to play and to formulate its strategy.

Earlier this month, another paper by Sandholm and Brown about Libratus took one of three best paper awards at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2017) conference in Long Beach, Calif.

CMU, PSC and Pitt to Build Brain Data Repository

$5M Grant from the National Institutes of Health Will Help Promote Open Data in Neuroscience

Dec. 7, 2017

Researchers with Carnegie Mellon’s Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center (MBIC), the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biological Imaging (CBI) will help to usher in an era of open data research in neuroscience by building a confocal fluorescence microscopy data repository. The data archive will give researchers easy, searchable access to petabytes of existing data.

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Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Established in 1986, PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry and is a leading partner in XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment), the National Science Foundation cyber-infrastructure program.